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Using a Blank Presentation. Now if you don't want to use a design template or AutoContent, or you don't want to create a presentation from an existing PowerPoint presentation, one thing you can do is simply create a blank presentation. First thought, you may think why on earth would I want to use a blank presentation? A blank presentation will allow you to completely customize how your slides look and basically make your presentation completely your own. You are still free to use elements and design templates, but when you choose the blank presentation option, you start out with a clean slate that you can create. Click file - new and get to the new presentation task pane and you see the option under new to create a blank presentation. So if you click that option, what's going to happen is your task pane is going to change to slide layout; so with the very first slide, you are going to choose the kind of layout that you want. Typically, you might choose a title or a title and subtitle, and then you can begin choosing content layouts, which we will deal with in more detail later. So you see basically what you have is, well nothing. You have to create everything that you want on the slide. It's like having a blank piece of paper and a pencil in your hand, and you must do all of the creating. Now that sounds a little worrisome; think very carefully because a blank presentation allows you a lot of flexibility. For example, let's say that your company has custom colors and a custom banner, and you want to put this branding on every slide. What you can do is create that one slide, apply all of those colors and that branding, and then use that slide over and over throughout the presentation so that you have really a custom presentation with your own colors, your own clipart, or anything else that you might want. However, if you use a blank presentation, you are not just stuck to creating everything from scratch just because you've used a blank presentation. You can still use design templates. If you click the drop-down menu on the task pane and go to design templates, all you have to do is go back and find the template you want to click it to apply it. Point is, even though it is a blank presentation, you can still apply anything else that you might want. You can use different color schemes, which we will talk about later; you can also use animation schemes. So the point here is that the blank presentation simply gives you an easy way to be flexible, and you can use different kinds of content, different kinds of slide layouts, different kind of text and formatting and things that you might want, and it's a little more restrictive when you use basic design. Now one other thing I want to point out, if we go back to file - new, there are also some "new from template" options that you can also use when you are creating a blank presentation or just in general. These can be a little bit confusing so I will just mention them. If you see general templates, you can click that option and what you will get is a templates dialog box. Now this isn't anything you haven't already seen. What you are looking at here is "General" -- blank presentation or AutoContent wizard -- which you have already worked with, "Design Templates" -- and these are the same design templates that you see on the task pane when you choose from design template, and also "Presentations." If you take a look at these, these are simply the presentations you have when using AutoContent wizard. So this is just a short-cut way to access all of these different features without using the task pane. There isn't anything new here that you haven't already used. It's just another way to access it. Also, you will note "templates on my websites." This option, if you click it, will allow you to browse different websites and access templates that you may have stored. This is useful if you are in a company and there is a company website that has different templates that have already been created; you can grab one of those templates and use it in PowerPoint. And finally, notice that you can look for templates on microsoft.com. If you click that option, Internet Explorer is going to open and try to access microsoft.com, and, actually, what it is doing is accessing an Office site where you can choose your location, and then you can begin browsing Office and accessing new templates as they are created. You can then download them to PowerPoint and use them as you wish. So it's important to keep in mind that the blank presentation gives you the most flexibility, allows you to create the slides exactly what you want, but they are, of course, more work. You can also use design templates on blank presentations, as you like. So you have the flexibility you want and the creative power that may be important to you as you create your own presentation.